Urban Affairs Reporter

Waste operators have been digging up landfill in Sydney and trucking it to cheaper tips in Queensland to cash in on incentives supposed to encourage recycling.

The environmental regulator has told two Sydney landfill operators to stop exhuming waste and has said it will change licence requirements to stop others doing the same.

The practice, which amounts to digging up landfill and reburying it elsewhere for no environmental benefit, has been triggered by the widening gap between the cost of dumping waste in NSW and in Queensland.

Waste sent to Sydney landfill now attracts a $95.20 levy per tonne. But if some of what is sent is diverted from the ground, such as recyclable materials, operators receive a rebate on that when it leaves the site.

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But last year Queensland scrapped its waste levy, creating an opportunity for some Sydney operators to make money by exhuming material, claiming the rebate, and trucking the waste north to deposit it for a mini- mal fee.

Industry figures say several companies have been doing this.

The executive director of the Waste Contractors and Recyclers Association of NSW, Tony Khoury, said: ''They shouldn't be able to dig up a landfill. All they were doing was gouging money out of the state.''

NSW also loses money when trucks avoid its landfills and head straight for Queensland.

SITA, which operates three sites in Sydney, estimates about 30 trucks of dry waste - such as construction site refuse including concrete, wood, or glass - go north every day, costing the government more than $38 million a year in lost revenue.

Its NSW sales and business development manager, Geoff Gerard, said this was undermining recycling programs and investment in NSW.

''It is hurting us because our customers are saying, 'I'm sorry, unless you can do it for this rate, you're not getting the waste'. And for that rate they're transporting it to Queensland.''

Dry waste tip fees of about $15-$20 a tonne in Queensland, where fees have reportedly been as low as $6 a tonne, compare to up to $170 a tonne in Sydney. Mr Gerard said this meant trucks could save more than $2000 a load, even after $90-$110 a tonne in transport costs.

Transporting waste across the border is legal. But the NSW Environmental Protection Authority said it would add a licence requirement preventing waste being dug up without written approval.

''The EPA is aware that two landfill operators were exhuming landfill for alleged transport to Queensland,'' Steve Beaman, director of waste and resource recovery said in a statement.

Wanless Enviro Asset Management was given an official caution and fined $1500 for associated odour issues after its Kemps Creek facility, trading as Sydney Recycling Park, was found to be exhuming waste in February and March. It has now ceased doing so, Mr Beaman said.

The Queensland company did not respond to requests for comment. But the EPA said it understood that some of the waste had been stockpiled for transport to Queensland, Mr Beaman said.

The second operator, Blacktown Waste Services, said it had stopped exhuming recently buried waste this month, as soon as it was directed to.

But operations manager Ed Mundy said it still needed to send a quarter of the material coming through its gates to Queensland to compete with cheaper Sydney operators.

''Prior to sending to Queensland … I had another 12 people here sorting through the cardboard, sorting through the plastic,'' he said. ''But it was costing me more than it was worth to do it.''

Dial-A-Dump Industries director Ian Malouf admits having sent waste north rather than to NSW landfill. He said he was aware three Sydney operators had been digging up waste and he estimated another 15 were still trucking material north.

Environment Minister Robyn Parker said operators who sent waste interstate would be ineligible for a share in $250 million allocated to stimulate investment in recycling infrastructure.

The EPA had also proposed a new requirement that all waste be tracked interstate to see if there was a cross-border problem, Ms Parker said.

''Any decision we make will be based on facts and not industry speculation.''

But Mr Khoury said the only factor limiting the flow of waste north was a finite number of trucks.

''Queensland will continue to increasingly become NSW's dumping ground unless there are some regulatory changes,'' he said.

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